Tagged: bollocks

Another obvious lie too many National supporters believe is that Labour are bad for employment (because they raise the minimum wage too fast), and National have “solved unemployment” (because they’ve made it harder to maintain benefits):

Now, it is true that Labour raise the minimum wage much faster, and that National cut welfare (in a recession!). But the unemployment rates have been more like the other way around,* and anyone suggesting National are better than Labour at keeping unemployment down is either believing or promoting a lie.

Actually, it’s a couple of lies… but they’re both obviously bollocks to anyone who’s spent five minutes looking into them:

LIE 1:

“Raisng the minimum wage reduces jobs”

TRUTH 1:

If, as Key claims, Treasury has done research that shows major job losses would result from gradual increases in the minimum wage, then this amazing information would be world news – because the vast weight of academic research around the world ever since the groundbreaking David Card/Alan Krueger work in the US fast food industry 20 years ago, is that it would do no such thing.

LIE 2:

“National have solved unemployment by making it harder to get the benefit”

This confusion arises from a basic failure to understand the difference between individual problems/solutions and socio-economic problems/solutions, as sociologist C. Wright Mills pointed out 55 years ago:

After an eleventh-hour resurrection of Cut Your Hair just before the 2017 NZ election, the blog has re-overtaken its old rivals Put ’em all on an island, Keeping Stock and, the ultimate nemesis, Room 5 @ Melville Intermediate School.

(However, these rankings should be taken with a large grain of salt because not every blog is included, the stats are very fakeable, and each counter gives different stats, as you’ll see below)